Air ambulance charity alert

A CHARITY which funds an air ambulance is warning locals about an apparently rogue door-to-door collection scheme.

The Sussex Air Ambulance costs almost £4million a year to fund – the majority of which is done through fundraising.

However, the charity wants people in Hastings to be aware that a current collection in the name of the Air Ambulance Service has nothing to do with it and is not a registered good cause.

Representatives of the company are visiting homes across 1066 Country asking for donations of clothes, toys and mobile phones.

And leaflets advertising the collections claim the firm is “working towards providing financial assistance to cover or reduce the cost of ground and air ambulance medical transportation for patients caught in difficult medical circumstances,”.

Sussex Air Ambulance’s chief executive, Adrian Bell, said he hoped people would not get confused and donate thinking they were helping the Sussex Air Ambulance. He said: “I am not saying that the Air Ambulance Service is purporting to be collecting on our behalf.

“However, I would like to make clear that the Air Ambulance Service is NOT a registered charity and we will certainly not benefit from any donation you make to them, so please do not think otherwise.”

The company also asks for unwanted shoes, handbags, perfumes, blankets and bed linen which it says will be recycled and re-sold.

In small print at the bottom it says Air Ambulance Service is not associated with any local Helicopter Emergency Medical Service operators.